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If you want to eat like a local — enjoying tasty local specialties economically — go on a picnic.

While I’m the first to admit that restaurant meals are an important aspect of any culture, in Europe I picnic almost daily. This is not solely for budgetary reasons. It’s fun to dive into a marketplace and deal with locals in the corner grocery or market. And Europeans are great picnickers. Many picnics become potlucks, resulting in new friends as well as full stomachs.

To busy sightseers, restaurants can be time-consuming and frustrating. After waiting to be served, tangling with a menu and consuming a budget-threatening meal, you walk away feeling unsatisfied, knowing your money could have done much more for your stomach if you had invested it in a picnic instead.

To bolster your budget, I recommend picnic dinners every few nights. At home, we save time and money by raiding the refrigerator to assemble a pickup dinner. In Europe, rather than raiding the fridge, raid the corner deli, bakery or supermarket.

If your hotelier posts signs prohibiting picnicking in rooms, you’ll easily be able to find plenty of other atmospheric places to eat. But if you picnic in your room anyway, be discreet and toss your garbage in a public waste receptacle.

While I like to frequent local bakeries and outdoor markets, American-style supermarkets are a good alternative. Many of them occupy the bottom floor of big-city department stores, and some of them are very upscale. Here are some tips on how to navigate them:

Ready-made food: Many supermarkets offer cheap packaged sandwiches, while others have deli counters where you can get a sandwich made to order — just point to what you want. Most supermarkets offer a good selection of freshly prepared quiche, fried chicken and fish, all for takeout.

Produce: Don’t be intimidated by the produce section. It’s a cinch to buy a tiny amount of fruit or vegetables. Many have an easy push-button pricing system: Put the banana on the scale, push the picture of a banana (or enter the banana bin number), and a sticky price tag prints out. You could weigh and sticker a single grape.

In Spain and Italy, if there is no one to serve you, the store provides disposable plastic gloves for you to wear while picking out your produce (a bare hand is a no-no).

Or look on the (unrefrigerated) shelves for the common-in-Europe but rarer-in-North America “long life” milk. This milk — which requires no refrigeration until it’s opened — will never go bad … or taste good.

European yogurt is delicious and you can drink it right out of its container. Fruit juice comes in handy litre boxes (look for “100% juice” or “no sugar” to avoid Kool-Aid clones). Buy cheap by the litre, and use a reusable half-litre plastic mineral-water bottle to store what you can’t comfortably drink in one sitting.

If it’s hot outside, don’t expect the soft drinks, beer, or wine to be chilled — most supermarkets sell these at room temperature.

Sweets: To satisfy your sweet tooth, check out the dessert and candy section. European-style “biscuits” (cookies) are usually a good value, as are candy bars that might cost twice as much at airport gift shops.

A few special touches will make your budget meal a first-class affair.

In a park in Paris, on a Norwegian ferry, high in the Alps, at an autobahn rest stop, or in your hotel room, picnicking is the budget traveller’s key to cheap and local eating.

Rick Steves (ricksteves.com) writes European travel guidebooks and hosts travel shows on public television and public radio. Email him at rick@ricksteves.com and follow his blog on Facebook.

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How to shop for a picnic overseas

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